A bathing suit catalog from Gimbel Brothers of Milwaukee

A pretty plunger

Modeled on the store opened by their father in Vincennes, Indiana, in 1842, brothers Isaac and Jacob Gimbel opened a department store in Milwaukee in 1887. The brothers would go on to open stores in Philadelphia in 1894 and, their crowning achievement, New York in 1909. Gimbels eventually became the world's largest department store chain, employing 20,000 workers and netting sales of $123 million by 1930. This small catalog of bathing costumes was produced by Gimbels in the late 1880s.